Sunday, April 12, 2015

Chainsaw hands and awkward showers: Wrist surgery fallout


Exactly how I'll look going in to work on Friday, 401ak47.com

I sit here a one-handed man. Well, I have both hands, but one is encased in a puffy cast. If you read last week’s blog, you know I don’t have a cool story behind my temporary cast-edness. If you didn’t read last week’s blog, I assure you the reasons involve a hungry crocodile, a boatful of honor student orphans and their service animal companions. It’s not cool and I’m no hero. I’m just a guy who did what needed to be done.
                Anyway, so on Thursday morning I underwent a procedure to correct the damage that had been done, whatever the cause was. Shockingly, I have a couple of thoughts on this whole process of undergoing outpatient surgery and I will present those to you now in bullet form:



  • No food or drink after midnight. If you’re undergoing anesthesia, you can’t eat or drink after midnight. That’s fine – if all surgeries took place at 7:30 the following morning. But not mine. I was scheduled to go under the laser at noon. Noon. I understand to some people going twelve hours without food is a part of life. But not to me. I become a very cranky, ugly man if I don’t get my morning Kixx fix. Get to work, Science. I want to be able to eat my weight in cashews while I’m lying on the gurney waiting to go into the O.R. I think you’d find patients would be much less irritable.  
  • Things you need to take off. Surgery, like trying to get on a plane or traveling through time in the “Terminator” movies, has a very strict and confusing set of rules. Some things are cool to bring along, others, not so much. Apparently, these rules weren’t explained very clearly to either myself or the girl in the next bed as we both forgot to take off stuff. One of us left his or her undershirt on. The other left his or her nipple rings in. I’ll leave it to you to decide who was who, but either way, we both made life very difficult for our attending nurse. Let’s add going in fully-clothed, with all piercings in place to my cashew thing from above.
  • Pain meds. For the second time in my life – first was after my wisdom teeth came out – I’ve abandoned the prescription pain meds after day one. I’m not sure they did anything for my pain, but they did make me feel like I was living on a house boat with a hurricane bearing down on me. I’m not sure what the day-to-day baseline must be like for people who enjoy taking these things recreationally, but god have mercy on your soul if a perpetual state of seasick queasiness is preferable.
  • Thank god for cartoons and sitcoms. If it wasn’t for it being a central plot in one episode of every one of these ever, I would have no idea how to shower in a cast.
  • Early spring/fall are the worst times for wrist surgery. These are seasons defined by middle of the road temperatures. Some days are hot, others are cold. The clothing of choice for these seasons is the hoodie. Just so happens, hoodies don’t fit very easily over a wrist cast. Just another situation where pirate-style sleeves would be helpful.
  • Speaking of cartoons, I have lost ZERO forks inside my cast to date. What’s up? Where’s that hilariously persistent itch that can only be tended to by sticking silverware between cast and skin? Perhaps I’ve just jinxed myself. Forget I said anything!

                Alight, well that’s all the complaining I’ve got in me for today. I go back on Thursday to see if things are healing right or if demonic possession has set in. If the latter is the case, then they need to just lop the hand off and replace it with a chainsaw. Kind of hoping for that one, but we’ll just have to wait and see.       

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